The Grove Church // Bryson City, NC

Love: Impossible?

As we prepare to talk this week about loving your enemies I'm wrestling with songs to help support this theme. There seems to be an open opportunity for songs like this. There's a funny song about a boy who lost his girl to some other interest. He finds himself in church and the preacher tells him to pray for her. He takes that advice and begins to pray, "I hope a flower pot falls on your head... I hope your brakes go out at 110...". You know, the kind of prayers we all want to pray over our enemies. I'm not sure this is what that pastor had in mind when he offered that counsel but who knows. 

I found another song by a fellow North Carolinian with a powerful hook.

Pride won't get us where we're going

It's made a life of standing in the way.

Crazy good lyric.

This kind of pride keeps us from working with people we don't like. It keeps us from validating the truth. Just because someone approaches faith from a different perspective doesn't absolutely mean that what they have to say is false. And I think this is part of what Jesus is suggesting in this week's passage from Luke. 

We have a hard time with "different" when we fight so hard for "what's right." My wife and I argue sometimes. And the most frustrating arguments end when I realize we're saying the same thing but we don't understand each other because we're approaching the matter from our own unique perspectives, with our own words and our own passions. 

When Jesus tells us to lay down our own agendas for the good of someone else, we seem to stop with the people in our families and friends and sometimes even strangers. Everyone does this. There's nothing special about it. Nothing supernatural. It doesn't take any transformation to put those you already love above yourself. It does very little to paint a redemptive, restorative ethos to a broken world. 

What if we lay aside our agenda long enough to listen to what our enemies are saying? What are they demanding? What is the motivation behind their pleas? Is it possible my enemy is angry about the same thing I am? What if we could find a common ground? Is it possible that an enemy can become an ally? 

I'm not suggesting you go on vacation with them. But what if there was a way to sit across the table a work toward something together? What if I told you there was a lady who cared more than anything about giving kids a chance to get a college education? There's something redemptive about that, isn't there. And if you were to hear her passion and stories of lives changed and given a second chance, you might be inspired to partner with her to make a difference. What if I told you she was Buddhist? Would that change your decision?

We have been commissioned to be the redemptive and restorative force active in the world. Not just to people who act and think like us; not just to those who value what we value, but to all humanity.

It's easy to give when you expect reciprocation. It's easy to think "they deserve what's coming to them" when we are at odds with someone. This is not a call to what's easy.

This is an invitation to be different.

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